March 13, 2009

That Syncing Feeling

Filed under: Main — Tags: — admin @ 12:01 am

Why can’t the computer industry figure out how to do a good sync program?

No, I’m not talking you corporate wieners who have an Exchange server or Notes or whatever. I’m talking individuals like me. Rugged guys and gals who go it alone. I have a laptop. I have a desktop.

Okay, that’s old fashioned. Most people today just want a laptop. Humor me yet again.

One of the problems with having both a desktop and laptop is moving files between the two. When you go on the road, you want to take some work (or play) with you. So you end up doing the document shuffle. Despite an abundance of synchronizing utilities and programs, people mostly do this manually:

  • You copy the files from the desktop to the laptop.
  • You work on the files on the laptop.
  • You return and copy the updated files from the laptop to the desktop.

It’s an inelegant solution because computers are supposed to be smart and figure this kind of thing out. The problem is that the various synchronizing programs designed to do this are clumsy and intimidating.

Take the old Windows Briefcase program for example. It was easy to use, but the concept was alien to the standard way of dealing with files in Windows. The new Windows Vista Sync program is a clumsy, bloated disaster. In fact, running it crashed both my PC and laptop.

I’m sure there are other, better software solutions out there, but what I’ve been using instead of software is one of two solutions for keeping files fresh between both PC and laptop.

The first solution is just to keep everything on a thumb drive. I use the thumb drive to store my files on my desktop PC. I take the drive with me and my laptop on the road. I use the PC or laptop’s main hard drive as the backup, copying files to that drive as I’m working, just in case. But the “real” files are always on the thumb drive. Problem solved.

The second solution is to use on-line disk storage, such as Apple’s MobileMe or any on-line disk storage system. Keep the files on that remote drive full-time, again using the local hard drive (PC or laptop) as the “backup.” That means I have only one copy of the information. I never need to worry about getting files out of sync or losing something.

Then again, that’s only half the problem. The other problem with synchronization is e-mail. I’ve yet to see any sync program deal with e-mail on the road. So when I’m gone, I end up reading all my e-mail twice or, worse, I end up with unanswered e-mail on the laptop.

While I know I can use web-based email to fix that problem, I still thing some computer-based synchronization program that also synchronizes e-mail boxes and accounts would be swell. Until then, I can dream of a perfect world where files on different computers do stay in sync.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Powered by WordPress